Your browser is out-of-date!

Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now

×

More Voices

Some great voices have left us over the last year

So many voice people … and some greats recently departed. This time we’ll look at some of them and maybe a few of the current principals. I’ve been fortunate to do some voice work from stations in Belfast, Ireland to London; even some work that went on to the Cannes Film Festival. But the voice people are or were the kings of the studio. Also, we’ll revisit a recent Off the Beaten Path about the upcoming NAB Show. It’s right around the corner, if you haven’t heard. Hopefully you’ll attend (and you’ve already secured your room as the rates will rise on March 1st).

Gary Owens (aka Gary Bernard Altman)
Gary was well-known as the announcer from “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” to the voice of the cartoon character “Space Ghost,” but also his many years in radio and voicing commercials. We lost Gary this month on Feb. 12. He started his career at KORN radio in South Dakota in 1952 as a news reporter and the rest is history.

Casey Kasem (Kamel Amen “Casey” Kasem)
We lost the king of Top 40 radio, specifically “American Top 40,” last June. Many of us started in radio “spinning” American Top 40 and got to know Casey that way. Besides AT 40, he was well known as the voice of “Shaggy” Rogers in the Scooby Doo cartoon and the many times co-hosting “The Jerry Lewis Labor Day (MDA) Telethon.” So many places in radio and TV were occupied by his presence by either his voice or voice and image. This is a neat and unusual version of “Shaggy” doing a radio announcer imitation … specifically Casey Kasem (as you’ll hear).

Don LaFontaine, Hal Douglas and the Kings of Movie Trailers
This is probably one of my favorite bits. This is “Five Voice-Over Guys in a Limo.” If you saw a movie trailer in a theater in the 1970s to 1990s, you probably heard their wonderful and distinctive voices and delivery. Included here are John Leader, Don LaFontaine, Hal Douglas, Al Chalk, Nick Tate, and Mark “Disney” Elliot. We’ve lost both Don (Sept. 2008) and Hal (March 2014). Al Chalk is the guy who is recognized as Hal Douglas in the video, but we only hear Hal here.

Voice-Guy Getting Fired
One more with the real Hal Douglas … playing a voice-over guy getting fired doing a voice-over for the Jerry Seinfeld film. Funny stuff!

And finally…
Sciencefaction … German engineers have come up with what may be the predecessor to the Star Trek transporter (or replicator). A machine that disintegrates something, then reassembles it in a different place. It may be a long way from the sci-fi show’s technology, but it is an interesting start!

And the rerun of NAB tips from a previous Off the Beaten Path, in case you missed it.

If you stumble across a good or unusual web site that might be of interest, please don’t hesitate to send me the link and any info you might have about it. My email address is [email protected].

Close